Living the Country Dream by Ivins Bella;

Author:Ivins, Bella;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ryland Peters & Small
Published: 2021-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

The pleasing rhythm of lift and drop, using the axe’s own weight and momentum to chop more efficiently, quickly becomes addictive. Nick bends the knees on impact and wears steel-toed boots to avoid injury.

A neat stack of logs on the porch always draws admiring comments from passers-by. The appeal seems to be universal. We think of it rather like a full freezer, or cash in the bank. We’ve ‘banked’ the wood and it will keep us going over the coming months.

On more than one occasion we’ve driven home to find the track blocked by a windblown ash and these are quickly devoured by the chainsaw. The timber is high in dry matter and will burn unseasoned when necessary. Ash is our ‘emergency’ tree – when, by poor planning or continuous bad weather, we have run low on seasoned supplies, we cut an ash to keep us going. Its clean white timber cleaves beautifully and is a pleasure to split.

A lot of the firewood sold near us is sweet chestnut, which is prone to spit and crack. It’s fine in a woodburner but potentially hazardous in an open fire. We are keen on the much-maligned sycamore – it dries in just a few short months over summer and splits easily under the axe. Oak is not our favourite for the fire, where it seems wasted. It also takes at least two or three years to season and is heavy to handle, but we like the sawdust for smoking fish and meat. Holly trees make a great fire, as do hawthorn, but beware the spikes. Willow and alder we cut aplenty, but mainly just because we have lots of both, for the benefits in heat output seem negligible compared to the labour spent.

All this chopping produces plenty of big chips of wood that can be used as kindling and the saw work results in great piles of wood chippings, which can easily be swept up for animal bedding or mulching the fruit cage paths. The finer chips created in the workshop from hand-sawn hardwoods or by the chainsaw can be collected to be used in the smoker.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.